“The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police cannot go snooping through people’s cell phones without a warrant, in a unanimous decision that amounts to a major statement in favor of privacy rights,” Stephen Dinan reports for The Washington Times. “Police agencies had argued that searching through the data on cell phones was no different than asking someone to turn out his pockets, but the justices rejected that, saying a cell phone is more fundamental.”
“The ruling amounts to a 21st century update to legal understanding of privacy rights,” Dinan reports. “‘The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought,’ Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the unanimous court. ‘Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple — get a warrant.'”
Dinan reports, “Justices even said police cannot check a cellphone’s call log, saying even those contain more information that just phone numbers, and so perusing them is a violation of privacy that can only be justified with a warrant.”
Read more in the full article here.
“The Obama administration and the state of California, defending the cellphone searches, said cellphones should have no greater protection from a search than anything else police find,” The Associated Press reports. “But the defendants in these cases, backed by civil libertarians, librarians and news media groups, argued that cellphones, especially smartphones, are increasingly powerful computers that can store troves of sensitive personal information.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Every bit of sanity is so very welcome!
Kudos to SCOTUS for getting this one right.
Related articles:
As U.S. government discusses expanding digital searches, ACLU sounds caution – April 7, 2014
Apple to government authorities: ‘Show warrant to get data’ – May 9, 2014
Can U.S. police search your iPhone without a warrant? – April 28, 2014
U.S. court ruling opens phones to warrantless searches – March 1, 2012
AMEN!
Wow. That is very awesome to see the judicial branch is still sane
Wait for the story on the Aerio ruling!
Too late, Aerio lost 6-3
That was my point. What the Supremes give with one hand…
They’ll do it anyway.
And if they do, the evidence gathered will then be excluded at trial. That is the standard remedy for such a violation of procedural law by the police.
This is assuming that by doing so they can’t find out information that will lead to other evidence being gathered that would not otherwise be without the illegal search. There needs to be more bite to police violating constitutional rights than exclusion of evidence at trial.
Well, that might implicate the fruit-of-the-poisonous tree doctrine, and that’s another reason why this ruling is so huge!
Any and all evidence that would not have been discovered without the illegal search is “the fruit of the poisonous tree”, and would be excluded at trial. This would include something like a search of an otherwise undiscoverable contact’s premises that turned up something like contraband. All of that would be excluded as evidence.
Now let’s ban Eric Holder and the DOJettes!
Boom. Awesome job SCOTUS. I was shocked this was unanimous though; I expected a 5-4 or 6-3 depending on Roberts and Alito.
What is this strange feeling – it’s like a tiny bit of my faith in US government being restored. Weird.
Almost but not quite erogenous!
There is something arousing about constitutional law, the almost feral scent of justice wafting through the chamber, knowing glances exchanged in the penultimate encounter, the swishing of the black robes, the exquisite tucks and turns in precedent presented in hypnotic logical splendor, rising in a crescendo of citations and a consummation presented in bold, all-caps, forever terms.
Mmm. Beautiful. So is your new avatar, dear goddess.
Reactivated my Twitter after 3 yrs, did you see my test tweet
I assume your twitter is a variation on hannahjs, but I don’t know which one! There’s a nice selection. 😉
@DoctorEon
@hannagh
I don’t remember how this works. So millions of people know how?
If I’m tweeting out of tune, that may explain why I haven’t had a response from my sister since 2010—my tweets got lost in the ether? I don’t have Facebook either. I closed down my LinkedIn account. I guess social networking appeals to those who are social, which I am not very.
I tend to Face more than the others. I run my neighborhood’s Face as well. Follow request sent!
Wow, the S.S. SCOTUS can still tack starboard every now and again. Wasn’t sure if the ship was still on autopilot set straight for bearing one-nine-eight-four.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day…
A broken clock does not issue detailed documentation supporting its statement of the current time. Your analogy is broken.
Please demonstrate the ability to accept a wise and just decision with grace.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in awhile. And if that analogy doesn’t suit you either then that’s just tough shit hotshot.
Next step . . . ban Google and friends from reading my email
Why not simply stop letting them? You don’t have to use their services.
so this saves peoples videos from getting deleted when a cop gets pissed that you’re filming them
So your beloved Marxist Obama wants to invade your privacy at EVERY opportunity, while a 5-4 right-of-center Supreme Court just upheld your rights. So tell me again about how we conservatives are all about government in people’s lives again?
Obama IS a conservative and is in the wrong party. He is Colin Powell without the military career. Look at his record- not his statements and you will see he is no Democrat.
It’s statements like that that really make me laugh….
Keep laughing. He is in his second term.
His second term might not last that much longer…
He’s in his second term because America has been dumbed down by the teachers unions. But nobody has answered my challenge. The crickets are getting tired….
He is in his second term because the Republicans offered a non-electable candidate. When are they going to wake up?
And they will offer a non-electable candidate once again.
Besides it doesn’t matter who is the POTUS. It hasn’t for some time now.
Civil Liberties and Privacy are something Progressive/Liberals and Conservative/Libertarian types can easily agree on.
It is a good day in civil liberties.
^^^ THIS
I prefer the Judicial Branch to the other two branches of US government. At least it’s easier to count likely votes. Allows a lot more time to joyfully pontificate.
Next step, I hope, is to defang the NSA.
…Yeah, beyond the merely amusing defunding of the NSA inserting spyware and spygear into commercial Internet hardware, an act of redundancy to the US Constitution and admission of an almost total lack of control over the NSA by Congress. 😛
One wonders if this will also apply at borders .Right now CBSA has access to all electronic media (Canada ) as do the border officials in the USA
This has no effect on Canadian officials. It should apply to all us officials though.
Good news shoppers, this week’s special includes free warrants to search through cell phones with every family purchase of a nestymeal. Our menu has improved and spiced up to the point where asking a question of a police officer will now constitute a major security threat.
Come shop at Amurdica, the lipstick has changed but you still know what it is.
And I suspect this goes for laptops and hard drives. What about crossing the border?
I suspect if you are trying to escape the United Hates and entering the free world you’d be all right, as long as you carry lots of ammunition and tell the border guards if asked that you are off to invade another country and kill innocent people, or at least torture them. I think that’s how most get out.
this may put Google out of business
Isn’t it great that the US Supreme Court has actually read, understood, protected and defended the US Constitution? Who’d have imagined?!
Thank you Supreme Court!
Stuff it Obama administration!
Mixed bag on this.
You don’t want your cell phone searched? Take the responsibility yourself…. And lock it. We don’t need a law to “protect” us. More laws do nothing but strip away your own personal responsibility and hand them over to someone else..
All this does is protect criminals as well as the stupid people.
“But it’s my companies info on the phone we need protected from prying eyes” lock the phone….. Problem solved.
Lock your phone, if law enforcement “needs” to get into your phone, the law already provides ways for them to do so.
If you are being arrested, anything on your person is evidence. If you are just being questioned… They can’t legally search your phone anyway. So the ruling kinda doesn’t change anything.
Like I said, mixed bag. We don’t need a new law to do something that you are stupid for not doing anyway (lock your phone)
It’s not a new law. It’s called the 4th Amendment and it’s been around for 250 years. Locking your phone has no effect if the police REALLY want the information. Many things are excluded from a search incident to arrest. Take some classes in evidentiary and constitutional law.
You forgot the part where I said UNDER ARREST.
We are in agreement that while NOT under arrest they can’t. All this ruling does is basically reaffirm the law.
Under arrest, your phone is fair game.
“Locking your phone has no effect if the police REALLY want the information.”
EXACTLY my point. but go ahead and attack. We said the very same thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searches_incident_to_a_lawful_arrest
READ the 2014 update where it cites this very case, and then look at the “Exigent Circumstances” link…
“Exigent circumstances may make a warrantless search constitutional if probable cause exists.” “It must be a situation where people are in imminent danger, evidence faces imminent destruction, or a suspect’s imminent escape.”
Does not change, but new laws will be in place to do the very same thing.
Locking your phone will help, it will ensure that a warrant will be needed to view it. No LEO will be able to claim Exigent Circumstances without being able to back it up… The arresting officer will have no clue how to bypass your phones lock code without erasing the data themselves. It just makes sure that a warrant will be needed, if a warrant is obtained then locking your phone will not protect you.
But a warrant can’t be obtained “just because” there does need to be evidence.
Next time you go to court I hope you don’t rely on Wikipedia for expertise in the law. I wish we’d had Wikipedia in 1974. I could have avoided law school altogether.
“It must be a situation where people are in imminent danger, evidence faces imminent destruction, or a suspect’s imminent escape.”
And if the person is under arrest, and the cell phone in the custody of the police there is no danger of imminent destruction of data. Chimel v. California is operative here:
http://law.onecle.com/constitution/amendment-04/14-search-incident-to-arrest.html
In Chimel v. California,226 however, a narrower view was asserted, the primacy of warrants was again emphasized, and a standard by which the scope of searches pursuant to arrest could be ascertained was set out. “When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer’s safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule. A gun on a table or in a drawer in front of someone who is arrested can be as dangerous to the arresting officer as one concealed in the clothing of the person arrested. There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee’s person and the area ‘within his immediate control’—construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.”
“There is no comparable justification, however, for routinely searching any room other than that in which an arrest occurs—or, for that matter, for searching through all the desk drawers or other closed or concealed areas in that room itself. Such searches, in the absence of well-recognized exceptions, may be made only under the authority of a search warrant.”227
SCOTUS just equated your cell phone with the desk in the room in which you were arrested. It can’t be searched without a warrant.
That I understood, thanks Zeke. What law school, JC
McGeorge
Did you have a class from Kennedy?
Nope. He left the school before I could take any of his classes.
A contract lawyer I know was in Austria seminar with him after that, says AK is still active faculty
Not that I’m aware of. He left about 1975 for a seat on the 9th Circuit, if I remember correctly. But I quit after 1st year, so I could be wrong. Their website doesn’t currently list him as faculty either.
http://www.mcgeorge.edu/Future_Students/Global_Impact/Summer_Abroad_Programs/Summer_Program_in_Salzburg/Salzburg_Faculty.htm
I don’t believe he taught any classes from 1975 to 1988, when he was on the 9th Circuit. And he’s not listed in the regular faculty directory:
http://www.mcgeorge.edu/Faculty_and_Scholarship/Faculty_Directory.htm
At any rate, I’m sorry I missed him. It would have been the highlight of my short legal career.
More and more police don’t care about the law. And it seems those who are caught are seldom held accountable for their actions. Not sure how this ruling is going to change anything. They’ll just lie and cheat to get a conviction.
Has anyone started the stopwatch to see how long it takes bottvinnik to jump in with a new anti-Obama tirade?
O supporters typically use the word tirade. Constitutionalists use different terms.
He went on an anti-gay rant in another comment thread of which MDN mostly deleted. I wonder if MDN banned him.
I’m sure he’ll let me know soon if I’m wrong.
He has been deleted lately, and I am sad. You must learn the proper spelling of his handle and grandmaster namesake — it contains only one letter ‘t’.
And where are the BLN mourners? The interesting people are being deleted through the influence of a morality squad indistinguishable from the network of informers from the McCarthy era.
I red your comment.
And you and I will be next. Eventually, all that will be left will be mouth breathers whose lips move as they read the approved news and peck out socially acceptable commentary.
What patriot of the American revolution could ever have expected to be risking his or her life and fortune to produce a society that accepts thought police and “hate crimes”? I wonder if they would understand the “necessity” of disciplining students for playing with imaginary guns, or a public which demands that the government guarantee their safety at the cost of their privacy and freedom. Somehow, I doubt that this is what they had in mind.
Unanimity. Such a curious, lonely word.
Not that I’m aware of. He left about 1975 for a seat on the 9th Circuit, if I remember correctly. But I quit after 1st year, so I could be wrong. Their website doesn’t currently list him as faculty either.